Colton 911: Cowboy's Rescue. Marie Ferrarella

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       Chapter 3

      In contrast with the chaos that was going on directly outside, the moment that Maggie walked into the cabin, she was struck by its strong, clean lines. There were no unnecessary extras visible anywhere, nothing personal that pointed to the man who lived here whenever he was in town. It could have been a rustic hotel room waiting for someone to come and inhabit it. And at least for now, it had been spared by both the hurricane and the ensuing flood that had come in its wake.

      If there was any detraction at all, it was that very little light came into the cabin.

      “I don’t suppose the lights are working,” Maggie said. To test her theory, she hit the switch by the door. Nothing happened when she did. “Apparently not,” Maggie said with a resigned sigh.

      Jonah looked up at the living area’s vaulted ceiling. “At least the roof is intact and not leaking,” he told her.

      “There is that,” she agreed with a smile as she glanced up.

      Jonah made his way over to the gray flagstone fireplace. “I’ll get a fire going. That should warm us up a little.” He turned toward Maggie. His eyes slid up and down the woman and for the first time since he’d finally managed to locate her, he realized that she was drenched and dripping. “Why don’t you go look in the bedroom closet and see if you can find something to change into?”

      Almost self-consciously, Maggie glanced down at herself. There was a pool of water forming on the wooden floor just around her feet. She looked up again.

      “What about you?” she asked.

      “I’ll change my clothes, too. But first I have to go back out and put Cody up for the time being.” He could see she was about to ask him where he planned to put the horse. There was no barn on the premises. “The shed behind the house is still up.”

      “That’s a piece of luck,” she remarked.

      “Yeah,” he agreed with a laugh. “Otherwise, I’d have to bring Cody in here with us.” He saw the surprised look on Maggie’s face. The way he saw it, he wasn’t suggesting anything that unusual. “I can’t take a chance on losing our only means of transportation. Otherwise, we’ll be stranded.”

      Made sense, she thought. “Need any help?”

      Jonah sat back on his heels and watched as the bits of paper he had tucked in between the firewood began to burn. The flames spread, greedily consuming the wood that was all around them.

      “No,” Jonah answered, rising once he was sure that the fire in the hearth wasn’t going to go out. “I got this covered. You just do what you need to do to get dry. The bedroom’s back there,” he added, pointing toward the rear of the cabin.

      Not that it would have taken her an inordinate amount of time to find the room. The cabin consisted of the living area with a kitchenette on one side and a bedroom along with a three-quarter bath tucked directly behind the back of the fireplace.

      Maggie looked after him uncertainly. “You sure you don’t mind my rummaging through your closet?” she asked just as he crossed back to the front door.

      Jonah smiled, surprised that she was standing on ceremony, given the unusual situation they found themselves in. “There’re no skeletons in there if that’s what you’re worried about.”

      Maggie flushed slightly. “It’s not that. I just thought that...”

      Feeling awkward—after all, she didn’t know the man that well—her voice trailed off, letting him fill in the blanks for himself.

      “And you won’t find anything in there to embarrass you—or me,” he assured her. Turning up the collar of the all-but-useless rain slicker, he put his hand on the doorknob, turning it. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Jonah promised.

      The next second, he pulled open the door and stepped out into the gusting rain.

      Maggie hurried over to the front window to watch Jonah for as long as she could before he disappeared around the side of the cabin. From what she could see, it didn’t look as if the hurricane was going to double back. With any luck, she thought, crossing her fingers, Brooke was done with them.

      Now if the rain would just let up...

      Backing away from the window, Maggie glanced down at the wooden floor she had just traversed. Her entire path was marked by drops of water.

      “Time to stop leaving puddles,” she murmured. “Guess I’ll go see what he does have in his closet.”

      She’d thought that maybe Jonah would have some items of clothing that an old girlfriend had left behind—or perhaps even a current one. The way she saw it, it was more than possible. A man who looked like Jonah Colton couldn’t be going through life unattached for long, she reasoned. He was the kind of man that women literally threw themselves at.

      But all she could find in the lone closet as well as in the tall chest of drawers were his clothes. Debating, Maggie finally decided to borrow one of his flannel shirts, but there was no way in the world that she was going to put on a pair of his jeans. Jonah Colton had a good eight inches or more on her, not to mention about eighty or so pounds—if not more. Any of his jeans that she would have put on would have come parachuting down.

      She listened for a moment to make sure Jonah hadn’t come back, but only silence met her ears. Moving quickly she stripped off her utterly soaked shirt and put on one of the button-down work shirts from the closet.

      Just as she thought, it fit her like a tent. She tied the ends together to make it nominally shorter.

      Even so, it was way too big for her. It felt roomy enough for two of her to fit into the shirt.

      Maggie had just finished assessing herself in front of the freestanding large mirror when she heard the front door open and then close again. Holding her breath, she hurried out to make sure that the person she heard was Jonah and not someone who had stumbled upon the cabin while looking for some shelter from the storm.

      She released her breath when she saw it was Jonah.

      “Is your horse all tucked away and dry for the time being?” Maggie asked as she joined СКАЧАТЬ